Weekly Round-Up - IRINAS-101: 08-Dec-06
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Asia
IRIN-AS Weekly Round-Up 101
2 - 8 December 2006
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: First cooperative dairy farmers' union established - FAO
AFGHANISTAN: Violence fuels disillusionment and threatens
reconstruction - UN
AFGHANISTAN: Snowstorms kill five in northern Parwan province
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
NEPAL: Leprosy to be eliminated in two years
NEPAL: UN to speed up assistance on arms management process
PAKISTAN: Health alert in quake community
PAKISTAN: First association of people living with HIV/AIDS launched
PAKISTAN: Poor facilities at Afghan registration centres affect turnout
AFGHANISTAN: First cooperative dairy farmers' union established - FAO
Some 400 dairy farmers from seven cooperative societies in the
southeastern Logar and central Wardak provinces have set up the first
ever cooperative dairy union in Afghanistan in an effort to boost
production and marketing of pasteurised milk and other dairy products,
according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The union was established with help from the FAO and the Afghan Ministry
of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (MAAH), and has been registered as
the first private cooperative dairy union by the agriculture ministry,
Assadullah Azhari, FAO public information officer, said in Kabul on
Wednesday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56646&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Violence fuels disillusionment and threatens reconstruction
- UN
Growing insurgency, impunity for criminals and corrupt officials are
factors causing signs of despondency and disillusionment among Afghans,
according to a report by a United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
mission to Afghanistan, released in New York on Wednesday. The report
warns these problems, along with weak governance and the growing drug
trade constitute "a grave threat to reconstruction and nation-building"
and that Afghanistan's state institutions are too fragile to fully meet
the challenges.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56648&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Snowstorms kill five in northern Parwan province
Five people died and two others were injured on Monday in snowstorms and
avalanches in the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan's northern Parwan
province, local officials said. "Three passengers were killed and two
others injured when an avalanche hit their vehicle on Salang highway at
around 12.00am [local time]," Parwan province police chief Abdul Rahman
Saidkhail said from the provincial capital Parwan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56614&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
This week in Central Asia, a bread shortage was reported in
Turkmenistan, an energy-rich country with a repressive regime, according
to EurasiaNet, an information and analysis website. Panic buying and
price hikes have struck Turkmenistan amid the failure of the country's
winter wheat crop. State-run stores in the capital, Ashgabat, were now
experiencing bread shortages, EurasiaNet reported. In late November,
Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov announced a purge of state managers
in the country's agricultural sector, along with the dismissal of the
country's five regional governors. Niyazov's action came after an audit
revealed that officials had falsified data on the winter wheat and
cotton crops.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56673&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
NEPAL: Leprosy to be eliminated in two years
The end of hostilities in Nepal and the new political climate could help
the Himalayan country to eradicate leprosy in two years, according to
the World Health Organization (WHO). The decade-long armed conflict
between the Maoist rebels and the Nepalese state had killed over 14,000
Nepalese and had also seriously hampered development work mostly in the
rural areas, said officials from the Ministry of Health (MOH).
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56644&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
NEPAL: UN to speed up assistance on arms management process
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has approved the recruitment
of 35 monitors for management of arms and armies in Nepal, Ian Martin,
personal representative of the UN Secretary-General in Nepal, said on
Thursday. Martin returned to Nepal on Wednesday after a meeting with
senior UNSC officials in New York on how help the Himalayan kingdom's
peace process. Both the Maoist rebels and the interim government had
previously requested UN assistance in supporting the peace process.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56660&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
PAKISTAN: Health alert in quake community
A health alert was triggered in quake-stricken Pakistani-administered
Kashmir this week, after scores of children within a remote mountain
village fell seriously ill with a suspected 'water-borne' disease.
Distraught families from the village of Khania, Neelum Valley, contacted
the International Organization for Migration (IOM), claiming six infants
had died within two days, with many more showing similar symptoms of
vomiting and diarrhea.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56672&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: First association of people living with HIV/AIDS launched
Coinciding with the World AIDS Day, the United Nations Joint Programme
on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has launched Pakistan's first association of people
living with HIV/AIDS. "So far, only a few individual NGOs with limited
capacity were providing support to people living with HIV/AIDS, but
there was no association in Pakistan, whereas most of the countries in
the region have established their associations a while ago," Fawad
Haider, a UNAIDS programme officer, said in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, on Friday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56615&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Poor facilities at Afghan registration centres affect turnout
Heavy rains over the past three days have caused difficulties for Afghan
refugees coming for registration, with no proper shelter or heating
arrangements at the centres in the northwestern Pakistani city of
Peshawar in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) hitting turnout. "It's
all muddy inside and outside the centre as you can see. There is no
arrangement to keep women and children in a dry, warm place while they
are waiting to go through the process, which takes about four hours
usually," Habib-ur-Rehman, a middle-aged Afghan who came for
registration at the Katcha Garhi centre in Peshawar, said on Tuesday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56632&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
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